Ok, based on preliminary calculations on VG only thus far...silver is the new gold unless you're willing to burn gs each raid constantly.

While Venan is correct to say that theoretically there is no need to burn a single gs for gold timing (2h 20mins), what you need is really max attendance of 40 from start, with raiders staying till the end (i.e. returning to dump energy when full or close to full). Approximately, 2hours 5mins and the raid will end (assuming no stamina elixir or energy enchant), based on my preliminary calculation of 2006 hits. So you get about 15mins of leeway for slack time

Theoretically nice?

In reality, good luck trying to find 40 raiders online punctually (this part is still doable really)...AND staying for 2hours ++ (this part is hard...how can one ever predict all 40 raiders that joinwill be able to commit their time so strictly? real life ALWAYS crops up for people. In a team of 40, I bet at least a handful will have work/family/kids/gf/bf/parents/boss/accidents occuring in that 2hours).

Hence reality is that GS burning is ALWAYS needed to get gold timing. In the past, high attendance rate would be sufficient since there was no raid cap, less hits were needed (about 1400 hits), and the gold timing was longer at 3hours.

Venan is trying to make silver the new normal, OR they are trying to impress a point that gold timing are for gold-standard guilds (i.e. stellar attendance and robotic commitment levels) or gold shield-rich guilds lol.

I'm not disagreeing with the way Venan is making the difficulty level, but just wanted to give everyone a heads up of what to expect if you're gunning for gold (at least for VG). After all, they did improve the payout...so really, the new silver timing payout doesn't differ that much from the old (and arguably much easier) gold timing. And the new gold timing payout is REALLY sweet (hence you burn more gs for it).

Back when we added gold/silver rewards, it was intended as a bonus for finishing raids quickly, and as a way for us to be more lenient towards slower raids (so more people would hit bronze instead of failing and getting nothing).

However, all the old raids were balanced assuming that only 20-30 people would be running them, since we assumed most guilds wouldn't have more than 50% of their roster around at any one time. However, this meant that when people zerged the raids with extra members, it totally trivialized the gold reward level.

We are still making adjustments to raids and will continue to evaluate how things are working out and make additional changes as needed. We're OK with silver being 'normal' though, as that was the intent all along. What we weren't OK with was a high failure rate, which is why we made some quick changes today. We are giving an additional 10% bonus to valor for raiding with your guild (at level 3) which will actually make silver worth more than it was before, and should make gold even more attractive.

We are aware that it can still be frustrating to have guild members unable to save troubled raids, and are still thinking about ways to mitigate that problem without totally trivializing raids again. Some changes cannot be made via DLC though, and will take more time to plan and release. For the time being though, we recommend that guilds start off with few or no merc slots open, and then allow mercs in later only if help is needed. This will ensure that guild members have top priority when it comes to raid slots.

Dave wrote: it can still be frustrating to have guild members unable to save troubled raids

You should say "it is frustrating to have guild members unable to raid at all due to the cap".

Katy may have been surprised (according to comments she made in global) but I could have told you up front the idea of parallel raids wasn't going to happen except for guilds with wide might ranges or a couple who are burn crazy.

Thanks for your frankness as you all still appear to think the cap is a good idea. Every single person I have talked to thinks it is a disaster and ruins the casual nature of this game.

Please note that I haven't mentioned gold/silver/bronze here at all - that isn't my issue - it is the inability to casually raid without screwing over your guildmates. My feeling all along has been to dump the categories. Allow an unlimited number of guild members into the raids and pay out on a pro-rated basis depending on how long it took. There is no raid failure - just a really sucky payout.

At this point after playing almost a year, I am seriously thinking about opening up the new raid, run it once and then ride off into the sunset. The cap is why.

However, all the old raids were balanced assuming that only 20-30 people would be running them, since we assumed most guilds wouldn't have more than 50% of their roster around at any one time. However, this meant that when people zerged the raids with extra members, it totally trivialized the gold reward level.

I've played for four months (noobette I know but still have an 11k+ might main) and every raid level except Captain. I think I've seen more than 40 raiders only a handful of times and that includes any mercs. So in my experience what you say here is true - only around 30 raiders or half of the guild were actually able to make the raid. Part of what made raiding so cool was that you could put the call out and a chunk of your guild would answer to help you make gold. Making gold was not guaranteed. EVER. You had to work to actually achieve it (recruiting, getting mercs, making space, calling for help etc).

Please have a serious discussion about raising the raid caps. You are destroying the casual nature of the game and we are all telling you so!

Dave, i think that raid cap isn't a bad idea...in theory. You only made one big mistake setting it, you considered all the spots filled up from start and ppl staying from start to end of the raid. If only 2/3/4 players are "lazy" or have rl issues, and the idea of cap is totally screwed.This is the problem you must solve.

However, all the old raids were balanced assuming that only 20-30 people would be running them, since we assumed most guilds wouldn't have more than 50% of their roster around at any one time. However, this meant that when people zerged the raids with extra members, it totally trivialized the gold reward level.

I've played for four months (noobette I know but still have an 11k+ might main) and every raid level except Captain. I think I've seen more than 40 raiders only a handful of times and that includes any mercs. So in my experience what you say here is true - only around 30 raiders or half of the guild were actually able to make the raid. Part of what made raiding so cool was that you could put the call out and a chunk of your guild would answer to help you make gold. Making gold was not guaranteed. EVER. You had to work to actually achieve it (recruiting, getting mercs, making space, calling for help etc).

Please have a serious discussion about raising the raid caps. You are destroying the casual nature of the game and we are all telling you so!

Prior to 1.6 96% of GK raids ever started were completing with gold (this means 4% were silver, bronze, failed, OR cancelled). Our original intention when we made the difficulty levels was to have gold be a bonus for raids that coordinated extremely well with a split of about 25% bronze/ 50% silver/ 25% gold with minimal (less than 5%) failures. That is still what we are moving toward and we will continue to balance as appropriate. Needless to say we are still working on evaluating where each raid is at in proportion to our target.

Darkhorse wrote:Prior to 1.6 96% of GK raids ever started were completing with gold (this means 4% were silver, bronze, failed, OR cancelled). Our original intention when we made the difficulty levels was to have gold be a bonus for raids that coordinated extremely well with a split of about 25% bronze/ 50% silver/ 25% gold with minimal (less than 5%) failures. That is still what we are moving toward and we will continue to balance as appropriate. Needless to say we are still working on evaluating where each raid is at in proportion to our target.

One must be careful when trying to achieve a "quota" system (such as 25% of raids should be gold), as your population is constantly working to maximize their reward. Suppose that 1% of your game players are "big spenders". These are players who buy large quantities of shields and have the time and resources to fight nearly continuously in a raid. Many of these high spending players will often just spend enough to guarantee a raid gets gold, and allow for other non-spending guildmates to share in the gold reward. Increasing the raid difficulty may not result in much of a decreased percentage of gold raids, but instead increase the proportion of valor awarded in gold raids that go to big spenders. Since big spenders have the resources to get gold, they will always go for gold to get the best return on dollars spent.

Trying to achieve a lower gold rate might have the effect of letting the big spenders reach the end game sooner and slow the progress of the low spenders and no spenders, creating more division within guilds between "haves" and "have nots" and, when big spenders reach the end game, having those big spenders leave the game.

My advice: try to measure raid difficulty in terms of resources required to achieve "gold" "silver" or "bronze" and not on the percentage of raids in each category, as your population's big spenders will always "do what it takes" to achieve gold, and this might not be the best for guild development.

Darkhorse wrote:Prior to 1.6 96% of GK raids ever started were completing with gold (this means 4% were silver, bronze, failed, OR cancelled). Our original intention when we made the difficulty levels was to have gold be a bonus for raids that coordinated extremely well with a split of about 25% bronze/ 50% silver/ 25% gold with minimal (less than 5%) failures. That is still what we are moving toward and we will continue to balance as appropriate. Needless to say we are still working on evaluating where each raid is at in proportion to our target.

One must be careful when trying to achieve a "quota" system (such as 25% of raids should be gold), as your population is constantly working to maximize their reward. Suppose that 1% of your game players are "big spenders". These are players who buy large quantities of shields and have the time and resources to fight nearly continuously in a raid. Many of these high spending players will often just spend enough to guarantee a raid gets gold, and allow for other non-spending guildmates to share in the gold reward. Increasing the raid difficulty may not result in much of a decreased percentage of gold raids, but instead increase the proportion of valor awarded in gold raids that go to big spenders. Since big spenders have the resources to get gold, they will always go for gold to get the best return on dollars spent.

Trying to achieve a lower gold rate might have the effect of letting the big spenders reach the end game sooner and slow the progress of the low spenders and no spenders, creating more division within guilds between "haves" and "have nots" and, when big spenders reach the end game, having those big spenders leave the game.

My advice: try to measure raid difficulty in terms of resources required to achieve "gold" "silver" or "bronze" and not on the percentage of raids in each category, as your population's big spenders will always "do what it takes" to achieve gold, and this might not be the best for guild development.

I understand what you are proposing, but we already try to adhere by the advice you offered. The target percentages I posted above are not a quota nor are they the sole analytics criteria that we judge how well raids are going, they are just one piece of the overall pie that we use when trying to balance the raids.

Darkhorse wrote:Prior to 1.6 96% of GK raids ever started were completing with gold (this means 4% were silver, bronze, failed, OR cancelled). Our original intention when we made the difficulty levels was to have gold be a bonus for raids that coordinated extremely well with a split of about 25% bronze/ 50% silver/ 25% gold with minimal (less than 5%) failures. That is still what we are moving toward and we will continue to balance as appropriate. Needless to say we are still working on evaluating where each raid is at in proportion to our target.

Having been in hundreds of CV level raids across several of the top Guilds, the primary reason 96% of raids achieved gold is that people were burning GS (or energy potions bought with GS) to get there. It was a rare raid that I could get in the top 3 by joining in the first second, and using every drop of energy until the raid ended. In fact it was THE rare raid, I can only recall it happening once. Usually I'd have at least 3-5 people ahead of me, some of whom may have joined the raid later than I did, but were happy to burn.

The second reason was that if it looked like a raid was NOT going to achieve gold, the calls would go out for Guild members and mercenaries to join and give it a push, and people already in the raid might use a few potions of GS as well, that they would otherwise not have used.

You should be looking not just at percentages, but at the actual RPP of each toon in a raid. I used to jump in to help a raid get gold if I had spare energy on a toon, but obviously this sort of involvement is being made impossible with the raid caps.

The top Guilds are very well organised, with raids starting at set times, but if only 30 can get into a GK raid at the start when 40 wanted to join, and then one or two of the 30 achieve low RPP because real life got in the way, it causes bad feeling within the Guild, which can only be destructive to the game and what is left of the community.

I say what is left, because the social interaction through mercenaries is much reduced now, and I can't see top guilds welcoming mercs when just one reduces your score by 10%. If the reduction was pro rata it would make mercing more accessible.